With Community School District #2 as our object of study, this paper examines the ways in which knowledge from the fields of educational policy and teaching and learning can be effectively combined. Our central claim is that, in the current era of high expectations and high-demand curriucla, those policies which most successfully influence the educational core will be those which begin with micro analyses of what is being taught and learned inside the classroom door and then trace backwards to implications for macro-district-wide policies.

Against a backdrop of increasing concern about promoting student achievement in science, this study examines the construction of science classes without science in an academically prestigious high school.

The author considers citizen action as an explanation for the decline of the traditional curriculum and the rise of a more practical differentiated curriculum in U.S. schools during the first half of the twentieth century.

By examining the images of America actually being conveyed in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms, the author considers how schools are serving the purposes of Americanization and assimilation at a time when the traditional study of America is being renegotiated.

This article explores the tensions surrounding multicultural literature for children and traditional literary values and considers the challenges posed for those concerned with the creation, production, distribution, and consumption of children’s literature.

Conservative movements are becoming more powerful in the United States. Yet there are few investigations of why people actually "become Right." We show how people "become Right" through their interactions with unresponsive institutions.

This article explores the principal elements of Goals 2000, the origins of the "new federalism," the education legislative record of the Clinton administration, and what further efforts are necessary to meet the needs of American students.

The ideology behind the educational justifications for a national curriculum and national testing can damage members of society who have the most to lose. This paper analyzes the conservative agenda, discusses connections between national curricula and testing, increasing privatization, and choice plans, and notes resulting patterns of differential benefit.

Kindergarten programs in public schools generally have an academic/ formal orientation or an intellectual/experiential orientation. This article highlights the fundamental differences between the two approaches by examining current curriculum, policy and staffing, and administrative practice regarding kindergarten.

This article traces the development of the Dick and Jane texts, examining the dominent intellectual and economic considerations of their authors and publishers in order to demystify their transmission of values, beliefs, and meanings.

The author responds to Laurel Tanner’s review of his book Building the American Community. There are three things about Tanner’s review that trouble the author: First, Tanner does not really tell potential readers what the book is about; second, she is neither particularly careful nor accurate in her criticisms; and third, she sets a tone for her review that is vindictive.

In responding to Tanner's book review, the author discusses why he thinks John Dewey’s curriculum work remained largely confined to the world of ideas and had relatively little impact on school practice.

Understanding our history means knowing what the hopeful influences on the curriculum were (in terms of democratic ends) as well as the harmful influences. Students can use this knowledge to distinguish what needs strengthening from what needs to be reckoned with in the present situation. Kliebard’s book has clear methodological implications for future work in curriculum history.

The "hard" use of authority to produce change confronts obstacles that transcend administrative strategies. This article presents a conceptual analysis of authority and its constraints and shows how current conceptions of democracy, evaluation, and authority are interdependent.

The problematic relationship of knowledge and social-political power, as it affects the standings and justification of educational authority, is probed. Ways in which knowledge claims may legitimately support some forms of authority in practice are discussed.

The author constructs two model theories about the phenomena of school censorship. The first he calls the conventional view, representing the view that seems characteristic of professional educators. The second, he calls the “censor’s” view. The purpose of these model positions is not to describe the viewpoints of any actual participants in any real disputes. Instead, the purpose is to understand the structure of the issue better.

A revolution in genetics is occurring, but when looking ahead, we must not romanticize the past. The social history of genetics, and American education's association with eugenics, make it necessary that we understand that both education and science are informed by social attitudes.

Powerful elites assume they embody rationality and see themselves as husbanders of a set of common values. Any effort to develop an educationally sound policy on the teaching of value issues must be tied to alterations in the existing distribution of power in our society. Several approaches are evaluated.

The educational reform movement of the 1950s and 1960s offered insight into the complexities and difficulites of current trends to implement educational change. Two efforts to change curriculum, "new mathematics" and "new social studies," show how the reform began and problems that were encountered.

Curriculum developers assume that tasks to be learned are basically procedural and can be broken down into component elements. This approach may be useful for managing instruction, but it can interfere with the quality of education. True proficiency does not depend on following rules and procedures.

An examination is made of dependency in the area of educational analysis and policy formation on the use of metaphorical thinking. A clarification is made of the conceptual difficulties that arise from the inability to understand the difference between the phenomenological world and the symbolic world.

No matter how hard curriculum “technicians” try to keep curriculum concerns as purely instrumental matters, reality keeps rearing its head. The language of efficiency, of standardization, of cost accountability, of bureaucratic rationalization—always promising to become the primary if not the only way we deal with curriculum—seems never to quite succeed in placing a lid on other even more powerful curriculum issues.

Policy StudiesPolicy Studies is a refereed, multi-disciplinary journal focused on the policy implications of research and the analysis of developments in social policy and professional practice. Its standards are those of an academic journal, but it is designed to be read by policy makers and practitioners, as well as by academics and other researchers.

Education-line Education-line [UK] is an indexed, full text, electronic archive of conference and working papers, reports, policy and discussion documents and early research results in the field of education and training. Education-line is an Anonymous FTP site for education—the only one of its kind in the field!

Radical TeacherRadical Teacher is an independent magazine for educational workers at all levels and in every kind of institution. The magazine focuses on critical teaching practice, the political economy of education, and instutitional struggles.

Educational ReviewEducational Review publishes general articles and accounts of
research of interest to teachers, to lecturers, to research workers in
education and educational psychology, and to students of
education.

Educational ResearcherPublished by the American Educational Research Association, the Educational Researcher features section publishes manuscripts that report, synthesize, review, or analyze scholarly inquiry, especially manuscripts that focus on the interpretation, implication, or significance of R&D work in education, and manuscripts that examine developments important to the R&D field.

Educational PolicyInternational in scope and analytical in orientation, Educational Policy provides an interdisciplinary forum for improving education in primary and secondary schools, as well as in higher education and non-school settings.

Journal of Curriculum and SupervisionPublished by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the Journal of Curriculum and Supervision covers both curriculum and supervision.